As put "Providence is Divine Order" and "Necessity is the
Minister or Servant of Providence."
[From the First Book. THE CORPUS HERMETICA.]
Comment. Allegedly the Corpus Hermetica was written by
Hermes Trismegistus, who (according to legend) was the
builder of the Egyptian pyramids. Considered by many, the
Corpus was thought to be sacred writings originating in
Pharaonic Egypt. However, most of the Hermetic books
were lost during the burning of the royal libraries in ancient
Alexandria--but some books supposedly survived. Scholars
speculate that the surviving texts of the Corpus Hermetica
were likely redacted between the first and third centuries c.e.
What gets me is how sophisticated these two ideas posted
above are when it comes to Order and Necessity. Pharaonic
Egypt goes back fairly far in historical time, but here we have
these impressive ideas being put forth-especially in terms of
how they seem to relate to modern science theory.
In today's world scientists have introduced new perspectives
when it comes to Order, in that it more than often is connected
with Chaos. One can look at this linkage on two levels.
There's Providence, who can be considered as God who
bestows protective care upon us, or Nature as a spiritual
power. Unfortunately these dictionary accounts reflect our
old tendency to dichotomize, essentially separating God from
Nature, or Spirit from Matter.
But both scientists and theologians have begun to grasp hold
a new "holistic" perspective. And even out of the milieu of
the Sacred, there's now systems thinking. More than often,
scholars now are looking at the universe as one gigantic
System consisting of systems infinitum.--yet a Whole! Also,
some scholars are endowing the universe with Intelligence.
If so, this brings us back to the very archaic idea of Providence.
Thrust into the milieu of Religion, we have long declared the
existence of God or Spirit in a myriad of ways. But especially
here in the Corpus Hermeticum God is perceived as Order.
So what seems to happen when we look at Nature from this
perspective? In Chaos Theory there's the following outlook.
The cosmic explicate order is made-up of non-linear dynamical
systems, and some scholars believe that there is creative
potential embedded in non-linear systems. In other words we
are talking about "Cosmic Creativity."
An example of this Creativity, from a systems perspective, is
that eventually a non-linear system will eventually reach a
chaotic situation and is forced to make a shift in direction. It
either does or does not. If it does not, well the system will
fall more and more into chaos and eventual destruction. On
the other hand, there's a point of a possible shift--called the
"bifurcation point," when a "fork is created and the system
takes off in a new direction."
[John Briggs & F. David Peat, TURBULENT MIRROR: AN
ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO CHAOS THEORY AND THE
SCIENCE OF WHOLENESS, HARPER & ROW, 1989,
PP. 143-144.]
And the internal feedback in some non-linear systems is so
"complex that there is a virtual infinity of degrees of freedom."
For Ilya Prigogine, the late Nobel laureate, thermodynamist
and systems theorist, Nature is built by feedback among all
levels. Once again Peat believes that "this is an assertion
of Nature's creativity." Each new level of organization creates
something fundamentally new. It almost seems that Nature
has a choice of orders. And it is Prigogine's opinion that
this "mixture of necessity and change...constitutes the
system's creativity."
Admittedly, discussing Chaos Theory is dreadfully difficult
in terms of straightforward understanding. But it all boils
down to Creativity and Choice. Providence would seem
the fundamental Order in Nature, but out of Necessity it
need face endless Chaos out of which to rise unto new
levels of Be-ing.. So, as microcosms to the Macrocosm,
as individual non-linear systems, it's no surprise that we
humans face the same circumstances.
Long ago our ancestors must have intuited what scientists
today are discovering. Order is a Constant, ever continuing
over Time. And Necessity serves as the Spark of Survival.
